Friday Knows Tea

For those new to our blends, welcome! Our themed teas are mostly developed from CEO Friday Elliott's neurological superpower, lexical-gustatory synesthesia . These BTB ( behind the blend ) posts serve as a dissection of Friday's process and experience.  Today, however, we are examining one of our blends NOT developed by Friday. This tea was created by our shop teen, Teacup, also a polysynesthete. We interviewed Teacup about the inspiration behind The Modern Pro-TEA-theus. Portrait of a Young Blender Friday: Teacup, hello! Teacup: Helloooo Friday: Can you tell us why you chose Frankenstein as subject material? Teacup: We were working on the Horror Collection, and so I felt like having a good Frankenstein tea would be really really beneficial to the collection, especially because it's like a "classic horror monster," and I thought it would be fun to do that. Also I had several ideas for it. Friday: Tell me about the tea! Teacup: The tea is a fu...

In the springtime I am inexorably drawn to steamed green teas. Genmaicha, matcha, sencha, bi lo chun, clouds & mist, and so on. If it's vegetal, mildly seaweedy and light-savory with a lingering umami profile, count me in! Just the other day, a friend mentioned the idea of matcha cheesecake in passing. I don't even remember the context, just that the idea seeded itself like the marigold and snap peas in my garden and I couldn't stop thinking about it. Anyone who knows me personally knows that compulsive baking is a long-running thing in my house. When I was a tween, my mother put a time limit on the kitchen (I was banned from 10pm to 8am) because the smell of fresh cookies, muffins and breads kept waking her up in the middle of the night. She was not amused. Especially in times of uncertainty and anxiety, I turn to the oven. I've done a lot of baking this week. It's been fun to flex my sleepy chef muscles and get creative in the kitchen again! Now, as I lo...

Fall is here and we are ready ready READY for autumnal flavors. I'm personally using the season as an excuse to highlight one of my favorite fandom teas, inspired by an ill-tempered and irascible young girl from Omaha, Nebraska. September is the protagonist of Catherynne M. Valente's lush and heartbreaking Fairyland series. When the series begins (the first book is titled The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland on a Ship of Her Own Making), September is a discontented girl of twelve who is bored to tears by her life of rural chores and a school life where her imagination is underappreciated. She is swept away by the Green Wind to Fairyland, where she meets magical creatures and stumbles upon a series of quests. We see September boldly dive into danger in pursuit of friendship and adventure time and time again, feeling everything more keenly as the book goes on and she grows her small child's heart to match her rapidly maturing life experience. September's Blend ...

Today's episode of Behind the Blend features my personal favorite of our RPG character class collection: Ranger's Blend! The inspiration for each character class blend is an archetype, rather than any specific character. Rangers are sly, observant, and physically dexterous. They have a close relationship with the forest, a kinship with the natural world. Toasty green mélange of foresty delish. Green was an obvious choice for our base, but which green to pick? With so rich and mysterious an archetypal profile, I needed to put together a base that was a blend of bright and dark, toasty and lush. Houjicha (toasted twigs and stems) has the tree bark roasted notes and light body of upper-canopy branches. Dragonwell green serves to bring both sunshine-butter and earthy toastiness to the blend, and Gunpowder green complements the butter with a clean mineral finish. This tea didn't need anything other than tea. The Ranger is pure and complex, simple and layered, myste...

We get asked a LOT what the difference is between white tea and black tea, herbal tea and green tea, and so on. The world of tea is mysterious and a lot of you want to learn more, so let's start with the basics! True tea comes from the Camellia Sinensis plant. Always. Any infusion made from the leaf, stem, root or whatever other part of any other plant falls into the "tisane" category, also known as "herbal tea." Those are a whole tasty world absolutely worth your time and attention, but today we're focusing on true teas.   There are six basic types of true tea, delineated by the level of oxidation allowed to occur in the leaf during processing. After picking, tea leaves frequently go through a process of bruising, withering, heating, and drying. (I say frequently because the world of tea is so vast and varied, every facet of the end product is up for flux. How much caffeine? What does it taste like? Is it smooth or brash? The answer is always "it ...

Yoshiaki Hattori stands with his tea plants under a solar shade screen Meet Yoshiaki Hattori, sustainable tea visionary and crafter of some of the finest matcha we've ever tasted. The Hattori facility (Tenryu Agri-Farms) resides in Shizuoka, Japan, a region probably best known for its beautiful scenery, delicious food and huge trade in green tea. In fact, this prefecture grows 40% of the green tea in Japan! Even among smaller, more eco-friendly farms, Mr. Hattori takes an unusual approach to growing and processing. He strives to combine contemporary sustainability practices with very old-fashioned processing styles to bring the best of quality to the matcha market while minimizing his carbon footprint. In the world of Japanese green teas, it's common to cover the plants for the last few weeks of their growth cycle in order to encourage the final growth spurt to be sweet and complex, rather than tannic and dry. This is how matchas and senchas are given the smooth and t...

It's that time of year, friends! All the coffee shops here in Seattle are bragging about their cold brews again, and we refuse to sit out on the fun. Did you know you can cold brew your tea for the same smooth, delicious, lightly sweet results that have people obsessing over their summer coffees? Totally true and totally easy. Feel free to download this infographic! Cold brewing is fab. Just throw 2-3 tablespoons of loose leaf (or a few teabags) and cool water into a pitcher/teapot/fancy carafe/whatever, and put it in the fridge overnight. In the morning, strain the liquid off the spent leaves (or just remove your teabags) and enjoy your tea. There's a super cool trend circulating the tea industry the last year or two that takes cold brewing to a whole new level. Have you heard of ice steeping? This is my new obsession for Japanese green teas in particular. Sencha, Genmaicha, even the delicate and beautiful Gyokuro can turn on you and develop bitter edges in a snap if y...